


The Hour of the Weasel

by Yrindor



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Dark, Gen, Injury, Offscreen character death, Uchiha Massacre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-09 13:11:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5541281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yrindor/pseuds/Yrindor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the weasel-masked ANBU showed up in his office in the middle of the night, Ibiki knew what it meant.  He also knew he would never see the boy again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hour of the Weasel

**Author's Note:**

> All characters belong to Masashi Kishimoto.

Contrary to popular belief, the Torture and Interrogation Unit was largely empty after dark. Those assigned to active interrogations worked at all hours, but barring exceptional circumstances, they were a small fraction of the division, and any sounds they made were quickly absorbed by the thick walls and twisting corridors of the building. In the dead of night, most of the space was silent, and Ibiki regularly sought out that silence in order to think.

He was pacing in an empty interrogation room as he often did, his footsteps echoing off of the bare walls, when he felt a weak presence in the doorway. It wasn't that the shinobi behind him was concealing their presence so much as they had no presence to conceal. That caught his attention more than anything else; to make no effort to hide such a depleted chakra signature was tantamount to a death wish for a shinobi.

He glanced briefly over his shoulder, and when he saw the ANBU operative leaning heavily against the doorframe, he knew it had finally happened. "Itachi," he said quietly. Not the person but the animal, the weasel mask that hid the boy in the doorway.

It wasn't much of an invitation, but it was enough, and he heard the slow shuffle of footsteps into the room.

He waited until there was silence again before he turned to face the boy who now stood in the pool of light cast by the bare bulb overhead. His armor was soaked with blood, but his mask was clean, as if he had only just put it on. He swayed with exhaustion.

Ibiki dragged a stool to the center of the room. "Sit," he ordered.

Itachi sat, but he gave no other reaction, even when Ibiki moved to stand directly behind him. From there, Ibiki could see a long gash stretching from Itachi's right shoulder to the opposite hip, cutting through armor to bite into the skin below.

"You're injured," he said.

Itachi nodded once, the motion flat and robotic. It worried Ibiki; it was the same flat affect he made sure all of his new trainees could identify. The flat affect of a mind that had been forced through too much and was on the verge of breaking entirely.

The wet stain continued to spread across the boy's back; its edges creeping outward at an alarming rate.

"You're losing too much blood," Ibiki said with the certainty that came from years of experience. "Unless…" He let the question hang unfinished.

"Not yet." Itachi spoke for the first time since he had arrived. His voice was quiet, but it carried a mixture of determination and desperation that had been missing from his motions.

"Wait here."

When Ibiki returned, his arms full of medical supplies, he found Itachi shirtless on the stool, his bloody armor in a neat stack on the floor. The shinobi's mask sat on the top of the pile, but he clutched his headband tightly as he sat with his head hanging forward, his hair obscuring his eyes. He looked vulnerable, Ibiki thought, and uncomfortably young.

Ibiki said nothing, but he rested a hand on Itachi's shoulder in warning before he started washing the blood from the boy's back. Itachi didn't react to the touch of water on raw skin, nor did he react when Ibiki began the long process of stitching the cut closed, and Ibiki found himself thanking the universe for its small kindnesses, even if he knew such numbness should concern him.

The silence wrapped around him as he worked; he had never been one for small talk, Itachi even less so. He lost track of how much time passed before he finally finished wrapping the bandages around Itachi's torso and handed him a spare shirt. Itachi struggled with it briefly before rising and facing him directly for the first time that night.

"Itachi," Ibiki said once more. Not the animal this time but the boy, the boy standing before him seemingly beyond caring with tears streaming from his still-active sharingan. He reached out to rest a hand on Itachi's shoulder but stopped himself midway. He knew what had happened; there was nothing he could say. He let his hand fall back to his side, but the look in Itachi's eyes told him he had been understood nonetheless.

After a long pause, Ibiki turned his back on the young shinobi and heard the telltale pop of a transportation jutsu. When he turned back, the room was empty.

He busied himself with cleaning up the bloody cloth and torn armor until there was no trace of his nocturnal visitor. Then, he returned to pacing as if he had never been interrupted, locking the events of the night away securely in his head, never to be spoken of again. No one would ever know that Itachi hadn't left the village immediately.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Years later, when the weasel mask Ibiki still kept tucked away in the back of his desk cracked, he knew the time had finally come. Perhaps he should have felt sorrow at the loss of such a brilliant young shinobi, but he couldn't. All he could feel was relief that the boy had finally found release from the hell he had been forced into.

He thought back to the night the boy had sought him out in the dimly lit basement of Torture and Interrogation years earlier. He was no stranger to mercy killings - no experienced shinobi was, and if Itachi had asked, he would not have hesitated. But the boy hadn't. He had asked instead for the chance to live, not for his own sake but for that of his little brother. To live until his death could serve a purpose.

Very few things haunted Ibiki anymore, but that encounter still crept unbidden into his mind late at night. He had seen many shinobi break, and had broken just as many himself, but to see a shinobi choose to continue after having been broken by the ones he served made him question things he would rather not question.

He would mourn the loss of the gentle boy, but not his death.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, comments and feedback are welcome.


End file.
